


Queen of the Stars

by youreyestheyglow



Series: Christmas Stories 2k15 [1]
Category: N/A - Fandom
Genre: Christmas fic, Fantasy, Gen, OCs - Freeform, based off my friend's art, feel free to read it though!!!!, just sticking it here to keep all the christmas presents together, not fandom - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-04 20:42:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5347877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreyestheyglow/pseuds/youreyestheyglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two fantasy stories, one about a girl who grew too big and one about a fairy and a mermaid getting along. Based off of <a href="http://youreyestheyglow.tumblr.com/post/135890076961/my-friend-painted-these-theyre-the-basis-for-the">my friend Stephanie's artwork</a>. The second story is based off one of her drawings too, but it's not finished, so it's not posted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fallingcrimsonfeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallingcrimsonfeathers/gifts).



> For Steph! She didn't ask for this one, but I wrote it anyway.

Things all started with a girl.

This girl was a Girl, capital G, and she grew with the letter until she was big enough to be a statement in her own right.

She filled herself up with things like love and knowledge and wonder, things that made her heart swell and her head grow and her eyes widen. Her body grew so that it could house these precious things, and since she didn’t stop loving or learning or wondering, she didn’t stop growing.

Her friends all said the same thing: “We love you, Girl,” they told her, “but you’re too big for our chairs and our table. You can’t eat with us anymore.”

So she went home instead of looking for company.

Her parents asked her to leave when she couldn’t fit in the house anymore. “We love you, Girl,” they told her, “but you’re too big for our walls and our roof. You can’t stay with us anymore.”

So she wandered, and so she grew.

And as she grew, she found two other girls, two girls who liked to sit on her shoulders and speak in her ears. One was reckless and the other was peaceful, and between the two of them, Girl sometimes wondered how she was ever supposed to think her own thoughts.

“ _Step on that shed! I bet it would be cool!”_

_“Sit in that field. It looks big and you won’t hurt anyone.”_

 And Girl grew.

Her two new friends helped her. They read to her, now that her hands were too big to hold books. They told her what paintings looked like, now that she couldn’t fit in museums anymore. They told her how happy they were to sit on her shoulders and they told her how happy they were to have each other. They told her of places beneath the sea and places above the Earth. Girl absorbed knowledge and love and wonder and grew and grew and grew.

One day, Girl’s head poked through the atmosphere. She sat down with a _bump_.

She knew about the atmosphere. Her friends had read a book about it for her.

She couldn’t grow up, not anymore.

“I can’t keep growing,” she told her friends, whispering so she wouldn’t hurt their ears. “I might grow until my shoulders are out of the atmosphere, and then you wouldn’t be able to breathe. I don’t want to hurt you.”

But her two friends both shook their heads.

“Haven’t you ever seen a tree?” Asked the reckless one.

“Haven’t you ever noticed a flower?” Asked the peaceful one.

So Girl dug her toes into the ground. She dug until her lower body was buried in the ground, surrounded by water and soil and bugs that found refuge near her warm body.  She grew until her hair poked out of the atmosphere and her eyelashes resembled ropes.

She could speak no longer, but her friends knew what she wanted. Girl wanted them to leave her, now. To slide down her arms, using her thick arm hair as handholds. To head back down to a safe place, instead of dying far above the clouds.

The two friends, though, had other ideas. They would not leave her, but they would not die alone.

They grabbed onto her hair and pulled themselves up. It had been too big for a brush for quite some time, and it had grown thick and strong until Girl no longer noticed when it was pulled.

The two friends met on the crown of Girl’s head and waited.

She grew slowly but surely, and the two friends clung to each other, feet pressed reassuringly into the grassy tangle of Girl’s hair, and they closed their eyes as their heads broke into the sky.

Girl was just as surprised as they were when they continued breathing, but she could say nothing. Her thoughts had slowed down. Her features were so big they resembled bark on a tree more than a face. Her trunk was anchored to the ground. She stood, arms at her side, taking in the earth and the sun and the clouds, and found that she had seen a tree and noticed a flower and become more than either could ever aspire to be. Her body sank into the ocean, where small fish flitted against her cool skin. Her face turned towards the stars, and they and the planets settled atop her head like a crown. She twitched her nose and meteors hurtled down towards the ground. Her hair became branches, her feet became roots, and she breathed life for her friends atop her head.

They climbed, wonderstruck, separating from each other as their branches took them in different directions. The reckless one followed the bright, shining light, and found her way to the sun. The peaceful one followed the soft, calming glow, and found her way to the moon. They settled down in the branches of their friend’s hair and found that they had come home – and they were not the only ones.

Children built houses on her hipbones. Adults climbed her back and found that they would never reach the top, but they could sit on her lower back and gaze out at their world and find peace. Elves found safety in the rolls of her stomach. Krakens found hiding places behind her knees. Leprechauns hid their gold where her belly met the ground. Anyone who followed the meteors closely enough would have seen the largest one find its way to the ocean, where a fairy and a merman met by its light, and ended an ancient war by agreeing to share it between the air and the sea.

Girl saw them all, felt them all, heard them all, and welcomed all who found her. It was a strange day in this world’s history, but if you read your history books closely enough, you might find that day – that one day – that brief moment in time when the planet’s inhabitants discovered that they were protected, and swore their loyalty to the one who towered over them and sunk far beneath them, to the one who knew them all and still worked to learn about them all, to the one who loved and wondered and learned and expanded until her friends became light so that they could illuminate her.

They can still be seen there, if you look hard enough. On the right kind of day, when the sun’s rays reach towards the ground, you might see the arms of a girl who once stood on the grass. Gaze at the moon, and you might see a woman looking back at you, remembering the time she spent beneath the clouds. Stare at the night sky long enough, and you might see a star twinkle, go out for just a little too long, or for just the right amount of time for a girl to have blinked.

Look at every tree; notice every flower. One day, you might find out where Girl went, and how she protects and loves all beings, and why we now call her Mother Nature.


	2. Bird and a Fish

It is well known that there has been a war going on between the fairies and the merpeople for _ages_. They’ve been fighting for longer than you or I have been alive, and to be perfectly honest, neither one of us matters very much to them, nor does the human race. We are a nuisance. We get in the way and stick things in the ground and make lots of noise. This is an accepted fact of our existence, and most species allow us to indulge in our yelling and temper tantrums, because centaurs fight and dwarves grumble and elves stare in mirrors a lot and if humans want to yell, that’s what they’ll do. Not much to be done about it.

The fairies and the merpeople are fans of humanity in the way that you and I are fans of, say, spiders. We appreciate their penchant for eating mosquitos. If they come in our house, we will destroy them. Fairies appreciate our penchant for covering up the proof of their battles. If we get in their way, they’ll destroy us.

The Folk, as they prefer to be called (if we must, in our human way, insist on referring to the many, many species under one name, we will _not_ call them “beasts” or “creatures” or “magical things” or “beings.” We will call them Folk. Under penalty of death.), look down upon the war. Fish and birds get caught up in it; dwarves find their mountains being taken apart a rock at a time and thrown at merpeople; clams find themselves flying through the air towards an unlucky fairy’s face; rivers and airstreams find themselves polluted. It’s an ugly war, and it’s been going on for ages.

Fortunately, humans came along, and we began making progress. Suddenly, Folk meetings stopped following these lines:

 

“My local river is a wreck, the river spirit is leaving, what have you _done_?”

“That water is going straight to the ocean, where it’ll rout the mers once and for all! That spirit should be grateful for the chance to sacrifice itself for the greater good!”

[Scuffling commences.]

 

Now, the meetings follow these lines:

 

“My local river is a wreck, the river spirit is leaving, what have the humans _done_?”

“Killed everything, ruined everything, made life hard for all of us! I can’t wait ’til they grow up and learn to keep their living space clean!”

[This conversation followed by a distinct lack of scuffling.]

 

Now, whether the fairies or the humans or the merpeople have harmed the earth worse is not the point here. Certainly, the Folk could figure it out if they tried, and equally certainly, they could destroy whoever was doing it. More certainly, the humans have ruined everything, and deserve destruction. But none of this is the point. The point is this: while the Folk blame the humans, there is peace at Folk meetings; and so long as the humans have not been confirmed as the perpetrators, the fairies and the merpeople have no reason to band together against us, and cease fighting.

This is rather a precarious state of affairs, however, made all the worse by the human invasion.

Now, don’t jump to any conclusions. Do not fall into that trap. Don’t tell yourself it’s because you threw a plastic bag away yesterday. Rather, ask yourself: have you noticed any really big people lately? No, not six feet tall. Not seven. No, not two feet wide. It doesn’t matter if they took up two chairs. _Really_ big. Gigantic. No? You haven’t? Perhaps you’re in the wrong part of the world, although if you look over the horizon, you should see _something._ Buildings in the way? I suppose so. I’ll just tell you.

There’s a Girl. Yes, Girl with a capital G, because I don’t know her name. No one does. There aren’t a lot of people willing to ask her, when she could step on them the way we could crush an entire anthill. And back when she was normal-sized, no one thought to ask, because no one knew she was special.

Anyway, Girl read a lot of books. Lots of them. So many you can’t believe. You’ve been to your local library? That’s nice. She’s read every book in there. Her brain grew to twice its size. More than that, she’s looked at people, really _looked_ at them, the way most people can’t. She’s looked at them and seen that they were people, all of them, and that kind of thought process takes a lot of brain power, so she had to grow. She’s seen places, like the Grand Canyon, and she’s actually taken in the full scope of them, until she really _understood_ what she was seeing. Her brain had to grow for that, too.

All this growing had an effect. She grew, too. She grew. And kept growing. No, that’s not redundant. She got really big. She had to leave her house.

Now, that’s a pretty big incursion on fairy space. She was in their air, and she kept insisting on being in _more_ of it. The merpeople took advantage of that. They did things I won’t repeat. The fairies tried to fight her _and_ the merpeople, but it didn’t work out. They couldn’t fight Girl at all. Every time she saw one of them, she’d be amazed, and she’d consider all the implications, and she’d really _understand_ what she was seeing, and she grew some more. Took up more air. And then it was too late. They tried assaulting her invisibly, but she’d figure out what happened, and she’d grow some more. And they couldn’t kill her. Her skin was too thick, by then. So the fairies gave up on her, and got back to their war. In fact, they started using her as a safe place. They’d hide in her hair.

Girl kept growing.

Eventually, she cracked the planet. She started growing down as well as up. You can only get so heavy before the ground decides holding you up isn’t worth it, y’know? So she ended up underground, a bit. Feet buried in the dirt. Toes amongst the worms.

And then she went through land entirely, and started growing into the ocean.

Well, you can imagine, it was a point of pride for the merpeople that she be stopped. First of all, no one invades the sea without getting kicked out by the merpeople. Second of all, the fairies had failed to beat her and the merpeople had laughed at them for it; now, they had to beat her, or lose their dignity entirely.

Of course, if the fairies had been too late, by that point Girl’s skin was as thick as a concrete wall. They could try to spear her all they wanted. They couldn’t even draw blood. So the fairies laughed at the merpeople, and the merpeople came back to their war twice as vicious.

Girl kept growing.

I don’t know if she knew she was a battleground. Her feet were so far away from her head at that point, I don’t know that any signals managed to get up her spine to her brain. She was at that in-between point, where she was too big to feel anything and not big enough to feel everything, you know what I mean? No? You will soon. Hold on, I’m almost done.

Well, the war was at an all-time high. Humans helped, of course. It was fun to blame horrible disasters on the enemy. Oil spills were because of fairies; the thinning ozone layer was because of merpeople. Failure to defeat Girl stung both sides. They fought like crazy. And Girl just kept growing.

Eventually, her head broke the atmosphere. Her feet found the deepest seabed. Did I mention she had a couple friends on her shoulders? No? Well, they took over the sun and the moon. Girl ended up with her hair in the stars. No, her hair was really long, very curly and kinky, it stuck up far enough. It’s true, I swear. I’m telling a story here, stop interrupting.

See, when Girl got all the way up there, she disrupted quite a bit. Planets and stars had to make room. But we were affected by the meteors that she knocked out of orbit.

They hurtled down towards earth pretty quickly.

Most don’t matter for this story. We’ll ignore them.

One, though - one matters.

See, this meteor was headed directly towards the ocean. And it was beautiful: bright and warm and flaming and melting. The fairies saw it, and they loved it. The merpeople saw it, and they loved it.

The meteor headed for the ocean, and the fairies and the merpeople sent their fastest representative. They could both freeze it in time, and have their own ball of fire forever. Magic really is something, huh? So both representatives headed for it. They reached the surface of the ocean at the same time, and reached for it at the same time, and caught it in their magic at the same time. It was like tug-o-war, but neither was stronger than the other.

They had a conversation that went something like this:

 

“Why don’t you go get your king? He can tell you what to do.”

“Ha! I’ve got my king’s support. Why don’t you go get your queen? She’ll tell you how to handle things.”

“You think I’m leaving you here with the meteor?”

“You think _I’m_ leaving _you_ here with the meteor?”

 

Neither of them was willing to leave. Neither could go back to their people and say that they had lost the Light to the enemy. Of course, they couldn’t both go. That would just open up an opportunity for one of them to double back and take the meteor. Neither could communicate with their people.

They sat down, figuratively.

They wished they had tea and cookies.

They considered toasted marshmallows, seeing as they had a nice fire right there.

They wished they had marshmallows.

Eventually, they decided that there was a decision to be made, but it could only be made if they trusted each other. They decided that they did. They decided that they had been telling the truth about having the support of their respective monarchs, and they decided that the war was over.

No, not just like that. It was difficult. They had to swear on their trust in each other, and trust that they were both telling the truth. They had to turn away from the meteor and head back home, trusting each other all the way - what? No, they couldn’t just double back and check on it. Pretend you’re a fairy. You’re heading back to check on this meteor. You see your archenemy, a merman, heading towards it. Do you realize that he’s doing the same thing you’re doing? Just checking on it? No. You’re absolutely certain that he’s come back to take it while you’re gone. Ditto for the merman. Both of you distrusted each other and both of you have restarted the war and made things worse. No going back to check.

So they trusted each other the whole time, and swore to their trust in front of their monarchs, knowing that if they were wrong, they had just forfeited their lives. They didn’t close their eyes when they approached the meteor, followed by half an army of their people. They didn’t bother hoping that the meteor was still there. They trusted each other so completely that there wasn’t a doubt in their minds that the meteor was still in place.

The two representatives brought their monarchs together. They facilitated the peace talks. They took turns guarding the meteor. When the time came to put the meteor in a permanent place, they chose the bottom of a volcano as equally inaccessible to both species, and therefore equally fair. They buried that meteor, and they feel the heat and watch for the lava every day. For that Light, they ended a war that had gone on longer than any of them could possibly remember.

And, of course, it was all thanks to Girl for disturbing the universe.

They still love her for it. They grow coral on her legs and blow cool breezes around her arms. Apparently, it’s thanks to them that Girl’s managed to get in touch with the world the way she has. She’s become the spirit of our planet, you know. She’s in every tree and every reef. Her brain is big enough to contain the whole planet, now. The Folk no longer consider her human. She is their mother, their planet. I’ve heard some Folk call her their queen.

You don’t believe me? Fine. Fair enough. I wouldn’t believe me either. It’s a tall tale. So I’ll just take up one more minute of your time.

Next time you go outside, look at the trees. Look at the flowers. Watch the waves, if you can see them. One day, it’ll be still. There won’t be any wind to speak of.

You’ll see a leaf flutter.

And you’ll _know_ Girl’s just waved hello.


End file.
